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David Miliband, president and chief executive officer of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), discusses his career in public service and the IRC’s mission to provide relief and development operations in more than 40 countries around the world.

On the IRC’s greatest challenges: “The issues of over-stretch, fatigue, complexity and a sense of hopelessness are very real, and those are the greatest dangers that confront the humanitarian movement. [The perception] of the people we serve is that this is a tunnel without light – they think the world is giving up on them.”

On comparing his past career in government to his current work in the NGO sector: “The danger in government is that you lose sight of the people, and the danger for the NGO is that you lose sight of the big picture.”

On effectively fighting Ebola: “Although a lot of the coverage in the West has been about treatment, you were never going to treat your way out of this disease. A lot of the urgency treatment centers have not been built [in Africa]. Education, identification and isolation have worked much better.”